See? Now that’s funny! But I really enjoyed this scene, where Arnie’s Terminator couldn’t terminate a terminator despite multiple shotgun blasts. etc. It’s not as subtle as the tense, drawn-out gunfights you find in old Westerns, but then they didn’t have a gargling dinosaur Harley soundtrack. What you favorite gun scene in a movie? (Feel free to leave YouTube links for your fellow readers’ dining and dancing pleasure.)

I like the Open Range shootout because of the way Kevin Costner manages to shoot two guys before the rest of the gang even manages to pull their pistols, which I believe makes it one of the more realistic Hollywood shootout scenes I’ve ever seen. When those with a will to brag are confronted by those with a will to fight, the braggarts are at a distinct disadvantage.

I also like Costner’s Peacemaker with the 16 chamber cylinder that blows men right off their feet. Well, the start of the fight was realistic anyway.

I always liked the scene in Good, the Bad, and the Ugly when the character Tuco wanders in out of the desert goes to the general store and builds a revolver out of parts from all the other guns in the display case. I know it’s not realistic with guns from that time but still cool.

Or the scene from the same movie where Clint Eastwoods character is cleaning his gun when the gang is coming after him. I always clean my pistols with a ready backup at hand just because of this potential situation.

The first one, where he nonchalantly hits that bucket waaaay out on the horizon. Then when he takes out the guy who left him for dead as the guy is frantically trying to ride out of range (pointless effort; if Quigley can see you, you’re in range). And that scene where all you can hear is the bullets smacking into the bad guys, then the rifle reports echo across the plain 3 seconds later.

And you nailed the best payoff line in any movie ever in that clip. “Said I never had much use for one. Never said I didn’t know how to use it.”

The last shooting scene in Deadpool when he kills the Brit bad guy with a 25 cal Saturday Night Special with a shot to the forehead (calm, cool, determined and funny) and then makes Colossus vomit. Out of the radar for everybody but think about a bit, a lot of mayhem and destruction and then a very simple and cold solution to the “bad guy problem”. Otherwise go for the last firefight in Saving Private Ryan.

I grew up watching the Bourne Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum so I love all the gunplay in those films. But right now, John Wick clearing his house/moving through the nightclub. UNBELIEVABLE. Keanu Reeves does three gun and it shows.

John Wick had the most realistic firefights I’ve ever seen in film, and I’m glad they chose to bring the character back for a planned trilogy.

Honorable mention goes to the mini-series “Generation War” on Netflix. WWII films from the German perspective are few to begin with, but the combat scenes were surprisingly well done and had that gritty Band of Brothers feel.

“9 April” is a great drama released last year from the perspective of those Danish soldiers unlucky enough to be caught in the 1940 invasion. Battles are short and smaller scale. Very calculated gunplay. Wounded germans and danes crawl behind cover and don’t die in overly dramatic ways. Kills are few. Everyone moves/shoots from cover to cover. German assaults don’t look like a bunch of frightened chickens running through a field. No cheesy music. It’s good stuff.

Tombstone has interesting ethics as well: random, thuggish BGs with guns doing bad things because they can, shooting for no reason other than it’s fun; flawed, hard, mostly GGs with guns doing bad things to stop worse things, shooting only when they have to, even though it’s “fun” in a sense.

Really, none of the “heroes” is a saint. Yet, though they carry guns, they generally look for ways not to shoot.

I’d like to mention some that are easy to overlook, but worthy of consideration:

A shootout that rivals “Heat” and “The Wild Bunch” is the finale of “Matewan,” John Sayles’s drama of the West Virginia coal mine wars. To me, it’s the most “pro-gun” movie ever made, and makes the case for the Second Amendment far better than the sum total of all the dogwhistle speeches about “thugs” and “shariah” with which we are being inundated.

The final shootout in “Taxi Driver” is just brutal. DeNiro, Keitel, and blood on every wall.
On the flip side, the “good ten dollars” scene from “Mean Streets” is the funniest gun scene ever filmed.

“Sleeping with the Enemy” — Julia Roberts calls 911 to report she “just shot an intruder” BEFORE putting a couple of extra holes in her stalker-wife-beater husband.

“The Devil’s Rejects”: the opening and closing sequences are fierce, horrific gun battles, and convinced me that Rob Zombie could direct one heck of a war movie if he was so inclined.

Matewan is a masterpiece. Plays fast and loose with history some, and is a deft piece of socialist labor propaganda, but you’re right — it is pro-gun and the shootout is a tour de force. Lone Star is my other favorite Sayles film.

John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. “Fill your hands, you SOB”
Clint Eastwood in the entire movie The Outlaw Josey Wales but especially the last scene when he is out of bullets but checks anyway then kills guy w his own saber
Clint again w “Smith and Wesson and Me.”
Gene Hackman in French Connection. You know the scene.
Multiple scenes from the Trinity movies. Hilarious.

Speaking of campy spaghetti western shootouts with anachronistic weaponry, Duck You Sucker has James Coburn tearing a motorized Mexican Army column a new one with an Mg-42, during the Mexican Revolution…

The battle of Camden in the Patriot. Though the actuall battle wasn’t anything like that, the depiction of that battle is the best example of an open field 18th century battle in cinema. The actual battle took place in a heavily wooded area, and probably looked a little more like the scene where the confusing mess of continentals and redcoats battle around the plantation early in the film.

I’ve always liked the scene in Apocalypse Now where Willard and (a tripping) Lance are in the bunker. Theres a VC screaming in the background and this one GI is saying “get the Roach”. Cue the Hendrix music as this blissed out soul brotha calmly walks in, aims his blooper (m79) and grenades the VC. Willard says “do you know who’s in charge here?” and the brotha smiles cryptically and says “yeah” and calmly walks away.

1. “Yo homey! Is that my briefcase?” from “Collateral”
2. “I guess you’ll just have to kill me.” “It’ll hurt if I do.” from “Last Man Standing”
3. “Are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?” from “The Outlaw Josey Wales”
4. The last gunfight from “Thief”
5. The last gunfight from “Open Range”
6. The opening scene from “The Letter” with Bette Davis
7. The bathroom shootout in “Freebie and the Bean”
8. The hotel shootout in the original “Getaway” with Steve McQueen
9. The attack on the Bashaw’s palace in “The Wind and the Lion”
10. The attack on the boom in “The Sand Pebbles”